By OLUSOJI DAOMI
There is a disturbing story emerging from Nigeria which deserves something more serious than the usual social media laughter, speculation and sensational headlines. If the allegations now circulating about young Nigerians selling kidneys for millions of naira are true, then we are looking at something much bigger than individual foolishness.
We are looking at poverty becoming a marketplace for human organs. Imagine a young Nigerian in his twenties. No stable employment. No meaningful savings. Bills are piling up. Someone approaches him with an offer: “You can make ₦7 million. All you have to do is give one kidney. You have two, you only need one.”
It sounds like a solution. It may even sound like an opportunity to somebody desperate enough. But here is the question that should trouble us: what happens to that young man five, ten or twenty years later? The kidney he sold today cannot be bought back tomorrow. Money finishes. A kidney does not grow again.
And this is precisely why Nigerians need to stop treating organ trafficking as some strange story happening to other people. It is a legal, medical, ethical and socioeconomic problem. It concerns the dignity of the human person and the future of a generation.
There is an important legal correction to make at the outset. Much has been said online that section 53 of the National Health Act simply says “you cannot sell your kidney.” The legal position is more nuanced, although the commercialisation of human tissue and organs is clearly prohibited by the statutory framework.
Under section 64 of the National Health Act 2014, the definition of “tissue” includes an organ. Section 48 prohibits the removal of tissue from a living person except in circumstances recognised by the Act, including informed consent and prescribed protocols, while section 48(2)(b) expressly prohibits removal of tissue from a living person for merchandise, sale or commercial purposes. A contravention concerning tissue attracts a fine of ₦1 million or imprisonment of not less than two years, or both.
Section 53 goes further. It makes it an offence for a donor to receive financial or other reward for donating tissue, blood or blood products, except reimbursement of reasonable costs incurred in making the donation. It also prohibits selling or trading in tissue and provides a penalty of a fine of ₦100,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year, or both.
There is therefore a crucial distinction between lawful donation and commercial sale. The law does not say that a person can never donate an organ. Nigeria has a legal framework for transplantation. But donation is not supposed to become a commercial transaction in which a financially desperate Nigerian sells part of his body to a wealthier person. That is the danger. The law is attempting to prevent a situation in which the rich become buyers and the poor become biological suppliers.
And there is another statute which makes the matter considerably more serious. Section 20 of the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition), Enforcement and Administration Act 2015 criminalises specified conduct connected with procurement or recruitment of persons for organ harvesting. It covers circumstances involving force, deception, threats, coercion, abuse of vulnerable situations and payments or benefits used to induce or obtain consent for the purpose of removing a person’s organs. The punishment is imprisonment for not less than seven years and a fine of not less than ₦5 million. The provision also criminalises persons who procure, offer, assist or are otherwise involved in the removal, buying or selling of human organs.
This is important because the law is not concerned only with the surgeon who eventually performs the operation. It can reach the people behind the transaction. The recruiter. The middleman. The person arranging the victim’s movement. The person involved in buying or selling the organ. The network that sees a desperate human being not as a citizen but as a commodity.
Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health itself condemned reported kidney trafficking in 2023 and specifically warned that sellers, buyers, medical practitioners and facilities involved in illegal practices could face the law.
So, when somebody says, “It is my kidney. I can sell it if I want,” the legal answer is not quite so simple. Yes, your body is intimately connected with your autonomy and dignity. Consent matters enormously in medical law. But individual autonomy does not mean that every transaction involving the human body becomes lawful merely because somebody signed a paper or accepted money.
There are things the law permits you to consent to. There are things the law regulates. And there are things the law prohibits altogether. You cannot contract yourself into legality where the statute has declared the transaction unlawful. That is the point many people miss.
And then there is the medical question. A young man who sells his kidney because he needs ₦7 million may imagine that he has merely exchanged one asset for another. He has not. He has exchanged an irreplaceable part of his biological reserve for money. What happens if he later develops kidney disease? What happens if he suffers complications? What happens if the money disappears into a car, rent, betting, business losses or family problems? What happens when the person who promised to look after him no longer answers his telephone? The money may be gone. The organ is still gone.
And Nigeria’s economic crisis makes this conversation even more urgent. When young people cannot find decent employment, when education does not reliably translate into work, when healthcare is expensive and when social protection is weak, desperation creates markets for people who know how to exploit desperation.
This is how trafficking works. The trafficker does not necessarily arrive looking like a villain. He may arrive as a businessman. A “connection”. A “doctor”. A “helper”. A friend of a friend. Someone who says, “Don’t worry, you will be fine. You have two kidneys.” That sentence should frighten every Nigerian. Because the human body is not a spare parts shop.
There is another lesson here for parents, churches, mosques, schools, universities and community leaders. We must stop teaching young Nigerians only how to make money and begin teaching them when money is not worth the price being demanded.
A young man should know that ₦7 million is not necessarily wealth. A young woman should understand that desperation can make a person accept a transaction that destroys tomorrow in order to survive today. And government must understand something equally important: criminal law alone cannot solve a problem created partly by economic desperation.
You can prosecute traffickers. You should. You can regulate hospitals. You must. You can strengthen NAPTIP and medical regulators. Certainly. But if young Nigerians remain desperately poor, vulnerable and unemployed, there will always be another recruiter waiting somewhere. The answer must therefore combine law enforcement with economic opportunity, public education, effective healthcare regulation and protection for vulnerable persons.
This is not merely about kidneys. It is about what kind of country Nigeria is becoming. A country where a young graduate can sell a kidney because he cannot find work is not merely facing a crime problem. It is confronting a profound development problem.
And Nigerians should also be careful with social media allegations. The claims surrounding particular individuals or alleged organ sales should not be treated as established facts merely because somebody has published them online. Criminal liability requires evidence and due process. An allegation is not a conviction.
But the larger legal principle is already clear. Human organs are not ordinary commodities. Lawful organ donation and transplantation exist within a regulated medical and legal framework. Commercial trafficking is another matter entirely.
So, before the next desperate young Nigerian listens to somebody whisper, “Sell one kidney and change your life,” let him ask a more important question: “What happens to my life after the money is finished?” Because ₦7 million may solve today’s problem. It may buy a car. It may pay rent. It may start a business. But it cannot buy back the kidney. And perhaps that is the most frightening lesson of all.
A society should never become so economically desperate that its young people begin to regard their own bodies as the last asset left for sale. That is not empowerment. That is desperation wearing the costume of opportunity. And if Nigeria does not confront the conditions producing that desperation, one day we may discover that the most valuable commodity in the country is no longer crude oil, land or foreign exchange. It is the body of the poor.
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